Continued Licona/Ehrman Discussion

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. Good afternoon, welcome to the Dividing Line. All of the usual suspects are already lined up in channel, all the

DL addicts are live and ready to go. Some folks that really need to get a life, but hey, it's nice to have them there.

And we are continuing today with our review of the Bart Ehrman -Mike Lycona encounter on Unbelievable.

There is a chance, there is a small chance, I'm not sure how big the chance is, but there is a chance

I will be on Unbelievable next week. We will see. Right now, yeah, it's

Unbelievable. The only problem is right now, see, both people would be on the phone line and I know that Jason doesn't like to do that and he asked me if I'd get an

ISDN connection so I could be on. The problem is there's eight hours difference between here and London.

I would have to find an ISDN connection at 5 a .m. in the morning and there's just no way to do it. So I said, look, you know, we'll use the

Dividing Line studios, it's still a phone line, but at least what's going into the phone line will be the best quality we can get, which is what we're doing right now.

And so if he doesn't find somebody over the weekend there in the UK, and I'm concerned he will, but I still have to study anyways, one way or the other.

I said I would. So I'm having to study this other subject and it would be a very interesting encounter. Okay, I'll go ahead and tell you.

Maybe next Tuesday I'll be taking on Brian McLaren, who is

Rob Bell in full paragraphs. So I already started today and we'll see.

And if not, then I'll have something to review on the Dividing Line. So we will see.

We will see how that works out. But anyways, we are continuing on with our study here.

We started, let's see, how far did we get? About 12 minutes into the discussion last time.

And we are listening to an encounter, a discussion of the biblical evidence for the resurrection between Bart Ehrman and Michael Iacono.

We are doing this because Christians have to think this through. And there are differences and apologetic methodologies that result in differences, not so much in the conclusions as in how you present the information.

And that's what we do in this program. I hope it is helpful to you to think through these things.

And let's just go ahead and dive back into our discussion. We are, as I said, about 12 minutes.

Well, actually, it's more than this, if you've listened to the program, because I cut out the first part.

But 12 minutes into the WAV file I have left anyways. And we press on. Paul is repeating what he heard from them.

This isn't like a game of telephone. This is Paul getting it directly from the eyewitnesses, of which he was one, and passing along in this formalized creedal formula.

Are you happy to grant, then, Bart, that this is a reliable bit of evidence for the fact that people experience some kind of resurrection experience?

I think it's right that some of Jesus' followers can be shown to have thought that Jesus was raised from the dead within a few years after his death, and that they claim that they saw something.

And is 1 Corinthians 15 a case in point? Well, I wouldn't quite go as far as Mike does on 1

Corinthians 15, because he doesn't actually say that he learned this from Peter or anything like that.

He says that he received it. And so it's plausible that this is an account that he heard from the

Jerusalem apostles, although he doesn't actually come out and say that. So he's writing 1

Corinthians probably about 25 years after the fact. And so it's not as if we have somebody who's writing two weeks after Jesus died saying that 500 people saw him last week.

We don't have that. What we have is somebody writing 25 years later saying that he has heard this, that these people saw him.

And for you, that introduces an element of, sort of, you know, things change in 25 years, that there is an accretion of, you know, possible...

Well, I think there is that. But, I mean, Mike is absolutely right. You don't need a long time for legends to crop up.

You need no time at all. Now, I remember I mentioned last time that within the past year,

I listened to a debate, and the Christian debater, who for the moment will remain nameless, was arguing very strenuously on the basis of a particular study.

And again, I don't have any problem with these studies. I don't have any problem bringing these issues up.

It is how you present these things as they relate to the truth of the gospel.

If you are making the truth of the gospel dependent upon these other sources, as these sources change, then you've got yourself a real major problem.

And what I mean by that, then, is that here's a guy, he was arguing, well, this study showed that myth does not arise this fast.

And now, a year later, I'm hearing, oh, yeah, myth arises just like that, you know, within minutes.

So, it all has to do with in the apologist's mind.

And this is determined by your theology. Your theology determines your apologetics, not the other way around.

If it does the other way around, it's backwards. Your theology determines your apologetics. What are you basing your claims concerning the authority of Scripture, the authority of the

Bible, the authority of the gospel on? Does the gospel, the message here of the resurrection, have to appeal to something outside of itself?

If you have to appeal to an outside authority, that outside authority becomes superior to the authority that you then claim for yourself, because you're having to appeal to an outside authority.

It's very, very important. We've got to think these things through. See how this works. As anybody knows who has heard an account of something that happened yesterday, and the account turns out to be wrong, you know, these things take almost no time at all.

All I'm saying is that if you're just looking at it from a strictly historical point of view, the way Mike is, what we have is somebody writing 25 years later.

From a strictly historical point of view, this is over and over again,

I'm going to stop and say, you have to determine, you have to recognize naturalistic presuppositions in Bart Ehrman's historiography.

Because see, if you don't challenge them, then history has to take place separately from God. And what is the

Christian God but a God who has acted in history? Now I am not saying that naturalistic historiography can prove

God's actions in history. What I'm saying is, any serious historiography will have issues in it when you enforce a naturalistic presupposition upon it, because it will never be able to fit when

God acted in history. See the difference? I don't believe that mere historical inquiry on a naturalistic basis can prove the existence of miracles.

Because if your presuppositions are naturalistic, you're going to have to dismiss any evidence of miracles or just simply be agnostic and say,

I don't know, I can't tell, don't know. And that's what bugs me about the very end of this debate.

Mike's really got to think about this. And I don't know if Mike's going to listen to this, I think probably he will. Mike says things at ends of debates that really, really, really badly damage his debates.

I forget what it was, but once he debated Barth, and the poor man, oh, good grief, he had no voice.

It was, it must have just been so frustrating to go through that experience. And I said that when we reviewed it.

Well, we didn't even review all of it, only reviewed portions of it. But I remember him saying something right at the end of that debate that just, you just, that's the last thing people are going to remember.

That's why I don't like doing audience questions at the end of a debate where you're wandering all over the place and the topic of the debate gets lost.

That's why I enjoy doing debates where, you know, the two people who prepared debate and that's it.

And then, and then you go. But he's going to say something at the end of this debate, right at the end.

And Barth's right to challenge him on it. Barth just laughs where he's going to say, well, you know,

I think the evidence demonstrates that Jesus rose from the dead as to who raised him from the dead.

We can leave that as an open question. What? No, you can't. And no, you're not.

And Barth, Barth laughs like, oh, come on. That's not the last thing you want to have people hearing because it just, it, it, it's louder than everything else that was said.

And that's a problem. Saying that he's heard these things and that other people have passed this along to him.

And it's not implausible that some of the people who passed these along to him were apostles, were some of the disciples of Jesus.

We're going to take a quick break and we'll come straight back into this with Mike and where he takes this then from 1

Corinthians 15 and these early accounts of resurrection appearances. Let's just fill you in again on who

I. And let's just skip that little part here if we can move it over here.

This is a new program. So I'm not sure. There we go. Let's just start. How you do it. Slash.

Unbelievable. There we go. For all of those. I like that. Gentlemen, let's continue where we left off. We were talking about 1

Corinthians 15, which, as you mentioned, Mike written by Paul is as it were, one of the earliest accounts of resurrection appearances in terms of when it was actually written down.

We'll, we'll move maybe onto the gospel accounts in a little while, but, but you wanted to keep talking about this, um,

Mike, um, you heard what Barth had to say there at the end of that last section. Why, why for you, um, do, do we have to kind of take this seriously as it were, as evidence for the resurrection?

Well, we have to keep in mind that most people in antiquity could not read or write probably estimates

I've heard are around 10 % could read and three to 5 % could read and write. So this issue of literacy, by the way,

I've got some books on it. I've been looking into it myself a little bit. I'm a little, um, not going to claim any expertise on it cause

I haven't read these books and so on and so forth, uh, to the depth that I would want to be able to comment on it.

But it does strike me that especially amongst the Jews, um, the issue of literacy would be a different issue than amongst non -Jews.

You have the synagogue, you have the centrality of a written scripture. You have Psalm 119.

Um, I really think there is a, there is an issue there in regards to literacy amongst the

Jews and hence the early Jewish Christians that would be different from the quote unquote standard pagan populace.

But that's something, again, that's a billion things I'd love to look into. And there's only so many hours in the day.

A lot that was learned in antiquity was learned through oral tradition. Uh, people had phenomenal memories back then because they trained them.

Um, they didn't have all the written kind of materials and iPads and everything like we have today.

So, uh, they worked on their memory, uh, oral traditions, creed, sermons, summaries, uh, or speeches, uh, even entire volumes like the

Homeric epics could be memorized and, and, and performed. So, um, people did a lot with their memory.

Uh, the Pharisees were really good at this. And they had tradition when we come to the new Testament and we read, uh,

Paul, he puts an emphasis on tradition, take heed to the tradition you received from us.

Or if someone stops following the tradition that we handed along to you, uh, you're not even to associate with such a person.

So there was a big emphasis on this. Um, so the question would be is where did Paul receive this, this tradition from?

It would seem, uh, given rabbinic, uh, sources and where they talk about how the tradition comes down from Jerusalem, the fact that the

Jerusalem church, uh, was the, the, the capital for Christianity at that point would strongly suggest that the tradition is going to come from Jerusalem.

The question that then would remain is, well, did Paul just, uh, say these things to give himself authority or was he, uh, passing along actual tradition?

Uh, was Paul willing to corrupt the Jesus tradition? And we can test them on this because in first Corinthians seven, he's talking about marriage.

And at one point we see where he makes this odd statement after saying, Hey, you can't get divorced.

Now, this is interesting. Uh, this is, this is a good application. Um, this is a subject

I've raised many, many times in the program before, because Paul's statement where he says, I not the

Lord is very, very frequently misrepresented by opponents of the Christian faith. Muslims all the time are saying, see, this isn't the word of God because this is

I not the Lord. All it is is Paul saying, I, as an apostle say to you, this is how you handle this.

Not the Lord. That is, I am not quoting from a Jesus tradition. I am not quoting from anything that has been passed down from what

Jesus said. And interestingly enough, we look at the gospels. That's exactly the case. Jesus did not address this issue in any of the gospels.

That's all he's talking about. This is an interesting application of that. Uh, listen, listen to what, uh,

Mike does with it. Worst. And unless your spouse cheats on you, uh, he's answering a question.

Well, what if my spouse is a nonbeliever? And then he says, well, not the Lord, but I. And, um, he's not saying necessarily, okay, well, this isn't the red letter edition of the

Bible that you're reading here. He's just saying, Hey, listen, there was some Jesus tradition. Jesus really didn't deal on this.

He didn't deal with a number of issues that have now come up in the church, such as circumcision, eating meat, sacrifice to idols, uh, nonbelievers.

Hey, there was no church then. So there wasn't a matter of being married to a nonbeliever. Uh, and he says, okay, here, here's the deal in marrying and divorcing a nonbeliever.

And it gives the teaching. And then he says, this is my command. Pass it along in the churches. The important thing to recognize is that here,

Paul had a perfect opportunity to invent some teachings about the matter imparted on the lips of Jesus to make them authoritative, but he refused to do that.

He carefully distinguished the Jesus tradition from his own apostolic ruling, which was equally binding, by the way, it seemed to him.

Um, so when we are hearing this Jesus tradition, we can be entirely confident that we're hearing the voice of the

Jerusalem apostles and this Jesus tradition is what precisely we have in first Corinthians 15, three through seven.

Now, like I said, that's a good application. You know, here have been the opportunity to make something up. He doesn't make anything up.

Um, and I think that's an excellent, uh, excellent application filed out away along with the other information you have on that particular text, because again, like I said, it is misused all the time.

And obviously a lot has been made in modern biblical studies, Bart, about whether Paul, as it were, kind of reinvented

Christianity in some way in his own image, um, to some extent. Uh, I mean, do you accept what

Mike has to say here, though, that we can trust that, that Paul isn't kind of turning it into something that it wasn't originally when it comes to the resurrection?

Uh, well, I think the, I think the important Mike makes some several important points, uh, one of which is that there were not, there were not written documents floating around for the most part about what had happened and that most of it's being passed along orally in a society where, where most people could not read or write.

I think where we disagree is, uh, on whether oral societies passed along things, uh, traditions reliably or not.

Uh, in point of fact, uh, cultural anthropologists who have actually studied oral cultures, uh, tell us that things get changed radically in oral societies, uh, and that, that even, uh, cultures that pride themselves on memory never pass along oral traditions, uh, verbatim, uh, that what happens in oral cultures is that it's simply assumed that whenever you pass along a tradition, you modify it for whatever context that you're telling it in.

And so things get changed by their very nature and they're supposed to change by their very nature. Now, at this point,

I would stop and say, well, wait a minute. Uh, that would depend upon what is being passed on. Uh, I mean, certainly, uh, mythological stories and things like that would be changed to, to, uh, match whatever situation you were facing or something like that, but that's not the nature of the gospels and the stories of Jesus, uh, that everything's getting lumped together here in one big pile.

Uh, what these anthropologists have told us is that the idea that something should be passed along without changing it is a phenomenon found only in written cultures.

And so, uh, people who live in written culture, written cultures, like, um, Judaism, who know that you can pass along things unchanged by writing them down, have argued without any basis that in fact, this also happened in oral societies, but in fact, it doesn't happen in oral societies.

Things always get changed. And we know that the traditions about Jesus were constantly being changed.

All you have to do is to take two, take the same story in any two gospels and compare the stories with one another.

Take the resurrection narratives. Somebody is changing the stories, uh, in probably almost certainly at the oral level and certainly as well as in the written level.

So here you're going to eventually, I don't think it's quite yet, uh, but eventually you're going to get the standard

Bart Ehrman. It depends on which gospel you read. It depends on which gospel you read. You know, I mean, he's got this thing so well memorized that, well, it's, it's, it's become so programmatic that we could repeat it along with him.

At least those of us who have listened to him over and over again, but you're eventually you get the synoptic issues and stuff like that being thrown in.

Well, we, we, we did want to come to the gospels themselves, but, but what, what do you make of Bart's claims about oral traditions did involve change,

Mark? Oh, I agree to an extent with that. Um, you know, certainly you could take and, and modify and adapt to the particular context.

We see Luke doing that on a number of occasions, you know, some things, and we see John doing it. Uh, yeah, there is let narrative elasticity in there.

Now, these are the weasel words that we use in scholarship, um, uh, narrative elasticity, intention in the text and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

Um, there is, there is a hesitation on the part of many, even conservatives, uh, to engage in harmonization of synoptic issues.

Now, like I said, I've been teaching to the synoptics now for years. We're in the toughest part. Uh, I do not claim to have answers to every single question, but anyone who would demand being able to have answers to every single question

I think is, is being naive and, and foolish. But I, at the same time, uh, you know, it's like the, uh, abscissima vox abscissima verba question.

Do you have the voice of Christ with very words of Christ? I don't even think that's a fair division of the question because what you have are the recordings of, and let's leave

John out for the moment. He has his own purposes. Uh, and I, I do believe that not only is

John an apostle, but that John is providing to us information.

The synoptic gospels did not for reasons I think will be crystal clear in eternity.

But I just don't buy the idea that we can understand every reason why the information that is included in the synoptics is there and what's in John is there.

I, I think that there are so many possibilities as to why there is a difference there, uh, that basically modern scholarship is, is just dismissed, uh, because they treat these as naturalistic as just natural documents written by men.

They don't, there's no possibility of anything else. When we look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it does sound like Mike is just assuming, uh,

Mark and priority followed by Matthew and Luke, uh, using Mark and editing Mark and changing

Mark. And that's the standard perspective. There's also other perspectives out there that are more minority, but that's the standard perspective that is out there.

It does not sound like he's going with a, um, an oral tradition that is being drawn from by each of the writers, uh, which

I think is significantly more, uh, a much better direction to go. I think it's much better to realize the continued presence of the eyewitnesses and so on and so forth, but be that as it may, you get this, you're dealing with the reality that there are incidents that are recorded where it's clearly the same incident.

And I know there are some people say, well, actually, you know, Jesus raised the same person three times or something like that, or cleanse the temple three times or something like that.

I, I, I don't think you can go there. I know there are people in the past that have, I just don't do it myself. Uh, I just don't see that there's, it's just,

I would not want to debate that one against a, a Bart Ehrman or something like that. Um, and you have differences in the narratives.

You do not have MP3 recordings. Okay. And people are demanding that you have

MP3 recordings. And I just don't think that that is a, a meaningful challenge against inerrancy, the demand of ancient written records that they be in essence, uh, well, you know, like you could take, you could take the dividing line and I have programs,

I think even on this, this Mac in front of me right now, and you can train it to recognize my voice and it could spit out a transcript.

Uh, I know Google's doing that a lot now. I, I'm really appreciating Google voice because people leave me a, a voicemail message and it ends up as a text on my phone.

And is it perfect? No, but I can normally figure out exactly what's being said.

Uh, and if I have to go back and listen to it, I can go back and listen to it. But, uh, you can, people want the gospels to be

MP3 recordings, transcripts of MP3 recordings. And that's not what any of the writers say they're giving to us.

And so I just have not found an incident where it is not perfectly understandable why a certain writer, uh, given the people he's writing to or, or, or how he's writing as well.

So I've just not found a situation yet where it's like, Oh, see, there's, they're just, they're just making things up as they're going along.

I've just not found that. Uh, there are perfectly understandable ways to, uh, to see why they have phrased things where they've phrased things.

And if they're drawing from that oral tradition, I just, I just don't see it. But that's, that's, that's where we're, uh,

I guess that's what's being called the narrative elasticity here. No question about that. When we see this in the gospels, the question is, does that really apply to the oral tradition itself as it's being passed along as oral tradition?

And I would say he would not have the same kind of evidence for that. Um, we do, uh, uh, studies that have been done by, uh,

I agree with Bart, um, on the oral tradition as it's done. And there are questions about which one is more reliable.

There are some that look at African tribes today and how they're passing along oral tradition. And then there are others that go back to the rabbinic tradition, which was far more, uh, careful on passing along word for word and say,

African tradition is today, which one goes back to the new Testament times. We really can't say for certain.

Um, obviously I would prefer to think that it was the rabbinic mode, but, um, in all honesty,

I can't choose between the two because you know, the African tribes of today don't exactly reflect first century, a second temple

Judaism and second century rabbinic Judaism doesn't represent first century.

So, um, it's hard to say, but the amount of elasticity, elasticity within the oral tradition,

I think was much less than it was when it came to writing narratives that used that. So you're confident that first Corinthians 15, it doesn't sort of, isn't kind of bad too much.

If you like, wait, when it comes to the possible changes in, in oral tradition, you feel this, this was something which was established and was, was passed along faithfully in that sense.

Well, sure. And you know, remember who Paul's getting information from. He, according to Galatians one and Galatians two, uh, a letter that virtually all scholars regard as one of Paul's authentic letters.

He talks about going up twice to Jerusalem and meeting with the apostles. Uh, Galatians two, he he's running everything past them to make sure he hasn't been working in vain all these years.

He's running the very message he's been preaching past them. Galatians chapter one, he uses the term history side to meet with Peter, meaning he's getting a history.

He's doing an investigation about the past, about Jesus. Okay. So I think there's really good evidence here that Paul's got reliable tradition.

Yeah. Let me just give you a piece of evidence that in fact, things got changed fairly radically at the oral level.

Uh, most scholars agree that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are so similar to each other because they have common sources written and oral and that John, John may have access to what the other three say, but he may also have been writing independently as stories certainly seem to, to be independent, uh, of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, uh, if Mark, for example, got his stories from the oral tradition and John got his stories from the oral tradition, all you have to do is compare what

Mark says about Jesus with what John says about Jesus to see if the oral oral tradition is perfectly consistent and not changing stories or not.

Now, listen, listen to what, listen to that argument there. Well, have the, have the, have the oral traditions changed compare

Mark with, with John and of course, uh, Bart thinks there's just this huge, massive difference.

Now, uh, Mike is going to argue that, that Mark does present, for example, the deity of Christ, things like that. We'll, we'll hear that in a moment.

But here's, here's the, the question I have, why not allow

Mark and John to be writing to different audiences at different times?

I mean, is that, is that going to change anything? I mean, um,

I can think of many instances when I have, uh, been traveling, you know, let's think about, uh, when

I debated Shabir Ali at Biola, okay. Um, I'm going to give the information about that evening's debate.

It's a big, it was a big evening, you know, 2 ,500 people there at least. And, and, uh, you know, there was, when

I reported on it on the dividing line, there would be certain parameters, the things

I would say, I would not give you all the background information. I may or may not have mentioned that when we got there, they had two comfy chairs set up and stuff like that.

You know, and I said, no, this is a debate, not a love fest. We are going to be debating one another.

We're going to need some place to write. Uh, we need tables and no, you know, they wanted to sort of the

California, you know, chill out type thing. Like, uh, oh yeah, there were flowers in between and stuff like that.

And, and we said, nah, I don't think so. Uh, but I might not include that, uh, depending on how much time

I have and stuff like that. Well, there are also conversations before and after that, again, depending on who

I'm talking to, who my audience is, I might include, might not include. There are certain things

I simply wouldn't say on this program. Um, that, you know, personal conversations with people.

You just don't, you know, don't do that in, in public. Isn't it interesting that a lot of the conversations in John are of that nature, especially from John 12 onward, the personal encounters of Jesus with the apostles and teaching on the night of his betrayal and stuff like that.

There's a reason why that wouldn't be in Matthew, Mark and Luke and so on and so forth. So I, I think that, uh, the fact that you have different audiences needs to be kept in mind, uh, at this point as well.

And the reality is Mark is very different from John in, uh, just about every aspect of his portrayal of Jesus.

And why would that be? It's not just because Mark and John had different personalities. It's because they heard different stories as the story circulated in different ways through the oral traditions down to the communities that then later recorded them.

Now, what's the assumption there? The assumption there is these are just human men. They're writing much later because Bart just assumes nobody who was one of Jesus' disciples had the brains to write these things.

Just couldn't do it. Just too stupid. So there's been way down the line. These are other people. They've heard different stories.

That's why they're different. Not that these were eyewitnesses or first -generation witnesses and that they have actually different purposes for writing the books they do and writing to whom they are writing to whom.

Well, I, I, I agree that again, they, there are differences within the narratives.

There's no question about that. They're, they're evident, but there is a difference we're talking about. Did the oral tradition itself change?

I'm contending that that remained intact. I am acknowledging narrative elasticity, but that doesn't mean that the oral tradition changed.

But my point is that John and Mark both got their stories from the oral tradition and that the changes are, it's not just a matter of stretching a little bit here or there.

The changes are enormous in the gospel of John. Jesus goes around proclaiming that he is divine.

I am the father are one before Abraham was, I am, I am the way, the truth and the life.

No one comes to the father, but by me. You know, I really hope my Muslim friends are listening right now.

Yes, Muslim friends, that's Bart Ehrman. The guy you like to quote all the time is saying that the gospel of, in the gospel of John, Jesus claims deity.

Now he's going to go on and say he doesn't to Mark and he's wrong about that. But all the time you quote him and you know, just, just,

I want you to hear how he interprets, at least in the gospel of John, he goes, oh yeah, okay. Those are clearly claims to deity.

And my Muslim friends are always going, oh no, no, no, no, no, no. Um, well, you gotta be careful which sources you cite.

You know what I mean? Mark doesn't have any of these sayings. Are, I mean, is it that Mark didn't think this would be important to point out that Jesus called himself divine or that maybe he has a different way of demonstrating the deity of Christ.

And he doesn't draw from those portions of Jesus' ministry that were specifically either personal to the disciples or the things that would distract from the particular points he was trying to make in his gospel.

That's, you know, maybe the apostles got together and said, this is how we're going to present Jesus. And this is what we want to focus.

I mean, there's all sorts of things. We, you know, modern, modern scholars like Bart Ehrman seem to think that they can have such a massive amount of knowledge of the past.

They can tell the people of past how they're supposed to behave. And there's, you know, they just don't do that in any area, but they do it in this one.

Certainly be the most important thing. So why doesn't why doesn't Mark have because he hadn't heard these things?

Well, I think that John, I think that John doesn't do some. He adapts here.

He does what like FF Bruce claimed. He said that what Shakespeare did to Plutarch's life of Brutus, that's what

John has done to with the Jesus tradition. And excuse me while I fall over here.

I really found that massively weak. It sounds like what he's saying is, well, part of the reason such a difference is because John really isn't giving us what

Jesus said or just really say these things is just sort of a major expansion later on.

And I'm like, OK, I definitely wouldn't go that direction. I think he makes it more dynamic.

He paraphrases. But the claims for Jesus being divine are very evident.

And Mark, especially when we consider him within the Second Temple Judaism, his claims to be the apocalyptic son of man.

Now, before we get into this, you've got to understand something that lost. I can guarantee it lost.

Ninety eight percent of Justin's audience this point. And if people are just aware of this one little thing, then what's going to follow here will actually make a whole lot more sense, because what

Mike's going to say is that, look, in Mark chapter 14. Jesus identifies himself as the son of man.

And he quotes from Daniel seven. And you look back at the son of man and Daniel and in other extra biblical works of the intertestamental period.

And this was clearly a reference to a divine being. And that's why the

Jews tore their clothes and said blasphemy and so on and so forth. Here's what you understand and why

Bart's arguing. Bart Ehrman holds a really weird view of this. Bart Ehrman says that Jesus was talking about somebody else.

That Jesus is not identifying himself as the son of man, but was looking for another person's coming who's the son of man.

Now, I don't know how in the world he gets there. This is one of the weirdest, strangest oddities about Bart Ehrman's beliefs, which if you can even talk about beliefs.

But the point is, he doesn't believe that Jesus was identifying himself as the son of man. I think that results in one of the most strained, weird readings of the trial of Jesus and things like that.

He's left going, I don't understand why the Jews were so upset by this. It's like, well, duh,

I mean, it just seems so obvious. But that's what's behind this. And unfortunately, it doesn't come out in this conversation.

And as a result, you're just left going, why are they arguing about this? But you'll see.

And I think are very strong. Everywhere you see it, Jesus is claiming to be the apocalyptic son of man.

And this is in every layer of the gospel tradition. It's in Mark, it's in Q, it's in M, it's in L, it's in John, it's in Thomas.

Oh, okay. You're sitting there going, what was all that?

Well, Q, the Q source, I mean, again, this is showing that Mike's got his

PhD, and he's standing there going toe to toe with Bart Ehrman, and Bart knows all this stuff, too.

And yet, just even throwing Thomas into the, quote unquote, gospel tradition just gives me hives.

And I would just never do that myself. I see absolutely no possible reason why you would include the gospel of Thomas in the, quote unquote, gospel tradition.

It has just been so overblown. The vast majority of the literature that's out there is not even worth the paper it's printed on.

The book isn't worth the paper it's printed on, but be that as it may, that's where all that's coming from, in case you're wondering what all that was.

It's in multiple literary forms. It's in parabolic, apocalyptic, didactic forms.

This is the strongest kind of multiple attestation a historian can look for, and this apocalyptic son of man figure is worshipped, he's served as only

God has served. And he's not called that in the Gospel of John. My point is, is that this is the apocalyptic son of man.

There's no apocalyptic son of man in a sense, like when he hears the blind man. No, but you said the apocalyptic son of, the apocalyptic son of man.

Now here Bart's just being obtuse. Everybody knows what Mike's saying. He's talking about the apocalyptic son of man, not the phrase apocalyptic son of man.

He's talking about the son of man in Daniel 7, and that's an apocalyptic vision. What I, I thought it was, oh come on,

Bart, what are you doing here? I don't have apocalyptic son of man talking, John, at all. Oh, you have it very clear, and John, I disagree.

For example, when you've got the man who was born blind, and then he is healed and kicked out of the temple later on, and then

Jesus sees him, and he says to the guy, do you believe in the son of man? And he says, well, who is he,

Lord, that I may believe in him? And Jesus said, I'm the one talking to you. And he, and he says, where's the apocalypticism? He said,

Lord, I believe. Well, what else would be the background of son of man than, than Daniel 7, the apocalyptic?

But again, remember, Bart's out to lunch on this one. And I mean, he's just, oh, well, there's this other person, and yeah, that's, that's, that's where it's coming from, and that's why it really doesn't end up going anywhere.

And he worshipped him. Where's the apocalypticism? So you worship him because - Mike, where's the apocalypticism? Okay. He worships him, and that's something that is, according to fourth

Ezra and, and first Enoch in the similitudes, the worship goes to the son of man.

It's in Daniel 7, 13 and 14, where all nations, peoples, and languages serve him.

Latruo, the word that's used always to mean a service that's given to God. Yeah, he's right there.

Smack on. That's not just the only passage. I mean, it's, it's, you've got where he,

Jesus says - Now, at this point, I'm expecting Bart to jump in and throw out his son of man, somebody else thing.

But there's a break coming up, and that breaks frequently change, you know, debates.

That's my experience. The father does not judge, but the father gives all judgment to the son so that they may honor the son even as they honor the father.

Well, if Jesus is going to be the one judging and the father gives the judgment to the son, this is precisely what's talked about the apocalyptic son of man in, in the similitudes of Enoch and fourth

Ezra. So yeah, he doesn't come out and say the term apocalyptic son of man, but he says, he says son of man, and he does, he talks about him in the sense of the apocalyptic son of man.

And he's doing those things. He's judging and he's being worshipped. I'd like us to get back into the, the question of -

There's a break there, and I just, I just cut there. But Turreton Fan just mentioned in Channel, he quoted

John 151. Of course, he quotes him in the King James as, I think Turreton Fan might wear a powdered wig, too.

But anyways, and he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter you shall see the heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the son of man.

That, of course, is an allusion to the text where Joseph sees the heavenly stairway, in essence, the ladder to heaven.

And he identifies this himself. And so, yes, that's about as apocalyptic as you can get of the actual resurrection narratives in the gospels.

But today, if you have something you'd like to throw into the pot, I do want us before we have to finish up the second half of the program to talk about the resurrection accounts

I mean, take, for instance, Mark and Matthew and Luke, and obviously there are differences between them.

Bart, you could, I'm sure, outline ten or more differences in the accounts of both

Jesus' death and his resurrection. And of course, you have things like the fact that it's like a set, this is like throwing red meat in front of Bart Ehrman.

He just went into automatic quote mode at this point. the end of Mark's gospel, where you get more detail on the resurrection, as it were, after the women have fled the empty tomb, is a later addition.

Bart, for you, does this kind of impair the evidential aspect of these documents for evidence?

Well, yeah. This isn't the biggest argument against Jesus having been raised from the dead, but one always does have to look at what kind of witnesses you have.

And when you look at the Gospels of the New Testament, it's striking just how many differences there are in their accounts of the resurrection.

I have my students do an exercise, my undergraduates, I have them simply do a careful study of what

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all say about what happened on the morning of the resurrection, the alleged resurrection, and compare their notes.

And they're struck by just how different they are. Who actually goes to the tomb that morning? Is it Mary Magdalene by herself or with other women?

If with other women, how many other women? What are they named? It depends which gospel you read. Now here we go.

And we've dealt with these in the past. There was a couple programs we did. We walked through his list of alleged contradictions that he used in a debate with William Lane Craig.

And I almost feel like skipping past this for a moment. I even did a presentation on his big one, you know, it was the

Day of the Crucifixion at the conference in New York last summer. And I think that's either on YouTube or available on some website in video or something along those lines.

And this is where it's going to go. In fact, I am going to try to find, because the time's going on here, I'm going to try to find this next discussion.

So this is what live webcasting is all about, folks. He put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, he put, these individual gospels has to say for themselves.

Or you've paid more attention to the individual gospels themselves that Bart Ehrman has and actually go beyond that level.

Certainly I would grant the narrative elasticity that we've been talking about here. I don't think that there's the kind of precision that they were given to these kind of precise details as we would want today.

So yeah, I grant those. I just don't see that those are necessarily problematic in terms of coming to the core details.

I mean, when it comes to the core details, what good are the core details?

And this is the thing that really bothers me about the William Lane Craig apologetic, which we're hearing right there. I just don't see what this has to do with the core details.

Well how do we know even the core details? Well, consensus of scholarship, not the accuracy of the documents that transmitted to us.

How in the world can you get people to the point of believing the gospel if the very container of the gospel has been jettisoned in the process?

I just, I shake my head, don't understand it. Maybe I'm just too naive.

You know, you all can just figure that I'm just not smart enough to get all this stuff. But it just seems to me that you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Obviously sharing common is the belief that Jesus rose again, but does any of this as it were detail, and Mike says it's elasticity, there are ways of looking at it which you don't have to see a contradiction necessarily, but you believe obviously there are obvious differences between the stories.

Does it kind of, at an ultimate level, kind of take away from their credibility as evidences for this story of the resurrection?

Well the bottom line I think is one we haven't even talked about, which is whether there can be such a thing as historical evidence for a miracle.

And I think the answer is a clear no, and I think virtually all historians agree with me on that.

Virtually all historians. Here we go. This is where the naturalistic presuppositions and biases of Bart Ehrman have to be challenged unless it is your intention to attempt to make inroads in the naturalistic academy by abandoning your own

Christian worldview and challenging them on this level. They don't like to be challenged on this level. This is where it gets rather important.

But apart from that, Mike wants to look at these as historical documents and wants to ask how reliable are they as historical documents.

So if that's the game you want to play, you want to ask are these historically reliable documents, then the first thing a historian looks at is evidence for reliability.

If you've got four documents that are contradictory at every point, then you say well they actually aren't all that reliable.

And so if the question is are these reliable witnesses, the answer would have to be no. And of course, to go to the point of contradiction requires

Bart to claim to have knowledge that he simply doesn't have. The level of modernistic snobbery on the part of most, well, modernist snobs is very, very high and I don't even think he's aware of it.

Well, they're not contradictory on every point, though, just on the peripherals. Well, the only point they all agree on is that Jesus was raised from the dead, but of course they agree on that.

These are written by Christians who are trying to convince people that Jesus was raised from the dead, so of course they agree on that.

But the question is are they reliable historical sources? It's pretty big, though, don't you think? I think it's big, but I think it's irrelevant to the question you're asking about whether these are reliable historical sources.

Okay, so we all agree that Jesus died by crucifixion. You agree with that.

You agree that afterward that a number of people, and because we've had two debates, and I know what you say in your books and I know what you said during the debates, you hold that these

Christians, early Christians, had experiences in individual and in group settings that they believe were appearances of the risen

Jesus. You hold to that? I don't know about the group settings. I think there were probably individuals who said they saw

Jesus alive afterwards. So you're not certain or you hold that these things did not occur in group settings?

I don't know if they did or not. Okay. So we have some facts here that there were these appearances, some individuals.

You think Paul had one, right? I don't agree that there were appearances. I agree that people claim they saw something afterwards.

Okay. So do you agree that they had experiences that they sincerely believed were of the risen

Jesus who had appeared to them? Well, I wouldn't quite put it that way. What I think is that I think

Jesus certainly died on the cross, and I think afterwards some of his disciples, I don't know how many.

Just want to make sure my Muslim friends heard that. It is certain that Jesus died on the cross.

Just wanted me to catch. Did y 'all catch that? This is your favorite guy to quote, Bart Ehrman.

You know, Jesus interrupted, misquoting Jesus. It's certain. That means

Sura 4, 1 -7 is wrong, according to Bart Ehrman. Just so you know. Just want to make sure that's very clear.

One, two, three, I don't know. Including later, Paul claimed that they saw him alive afterwards.

Okay. I mean, that goes against what the majority of scholars say, at least in my studies on that. Yeah, but the majority of scholars are

Christians who study this stuff, and so of course they disagree. Now, this is where it gets very interesting.

No, no, no, no. This is, don't let that music start if we're not done with this, because I'm not cutting at this point.

We've got to cover this. This argument that I've heard from Craig and Moreland and Mike Licona, well, there's almost a consensus of specialists who study in this field.

Well, you know what? Bart's right. What's the percentage of people who study this particular subject, the

Resurrection of Jesus, that aren't Christian, or at least don't claim to be Christian? Now, don't get me wrong.

I think there are a lot of people in the world that claim to be Christian that are not

Christians in any way, shape, or form. It's just the religion they're raised in, but look, if the risen

Christ does not make a wits' worth of difference to how they live their life, then they're not

Christians. They may call themselves Christians all they want, but you've got to remember this thing. For Bart Ehrman, as long as you say the word

Jesus, you're a Christian. For Bart Ehrman, all the

Gnostics were Christians. It doesn't matter what your worldview was. You could be a, I mean, you know, all the

Mormons are Christians. All the Jehovah's Witnesses, everybody's a Christian who wants to be a Christian. That's Bart Ehrman's mishmash of the early church and today and everything else.

He is very invested in this. You've got to understand that.

And so now you're going to have this interesting situation where Bart's talking about how all these people are

Christians, and Mike's going to make this comment about SBL. Folks, SBL's a mess.

You can go to SBL and there'll be gay seminars on gay themes in the

Gospels and all the rest of this stuff. Wild, crazy, nutcase liberalism all over the place.

Deconstructing this, that, and the other thing, okay? And Bart's going to call him.

And at this point, there could have been a nice, clear testimony given to the fact that you know what? There is a definition of what a

Christian is and what a Christian is not, adding exactly what happened. I agree with that.

I don't think so, Bart. Come on. Really? I mean, you're a member. We're both members of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Virtually everybody there's a Christian. You really think so? Yes. I'm one of the few agnostics there. I can count the agnostics on my right hand.

Who are you thinking of who's not a Christian? All right, John Dominic Crossan.

Now, John Dominic Crossan, my favorite heretic, a wonderfully nice man, but he's not a

Christian. He doesn't believe in a personal God. He doesn't believe in life after death. He believes Jesus was crucified.

He does believe Jesus was crucified, one of the most concrete facts of history. My Muslim friends need to hear that, one of the most concrete facts of history.

But then he was taken down from the cross, buried in a shallow grave, dug up by dogs and eaten. He's not a

Christian, but he is for Bart Ehrman. Got to keep that in mind. Does not believe

God exists. Does he call himself a Christian? He does. And so does

Elaine Pagels. I'm not sure. Elaine Pagels. Elaine Pagels, one of the biggest promoter of Gnostic myths on the planet, calls herself a

Christian. Now, listen to Bart. Trying to judge these folks or anything. Now, notice he says, I'm not trying to judge these folks.

How about judging what Christianity is, Mike? At this point, I was really disappointed because you've got to stand up and say there is an objective way of determining what

Christianity is and is not. If we become so politically correct that we will not even stand up and say, this is

Christianity and that's not. Why are we engaging in debates? Give up.

We don't have enough spine left to engage these folks. I was very disappointed at this point.

Like you are. Elaine Pagels is a faithful member of the Episcopal Church. Okay, let me ask you a question, though. And the

Episcopal Church, by and large, is in complete apostasy. So why are they not

Christian? Why are they not Christian? Okay. Here's the opening.

The door swings wide open. The light comes through. The angels sing. And Jesus or the apostles recognize that definition of Christian.

If you deny the cross and my views that Jesus and the apostles would not recognize an evangelical

Christian as a Christian. Now, there is a debate

I'd love to have. Oh, there is a debate I would love to have. He made the statement.

And man, if there's somebody out there sitting on a pile of cash, you got nothing to do with and you want to pay

Bart Ehrman $5 ,000 and fly him in. Oh, would we love to do a debate on that one.

But listen to what that means in his mind. The Jews and the apostles would not have recognized an evangelical

Christian as being a Christian. Think about that. You know, that, oh, wow.

My view is that because evangelical Christianity is so far removed from anything

Jesus ever preached. Well, we can debate on that on a different time. That'd be fun. Let me just ask you this.

That would be fun. And I would love to do it. Yes, sir. So he had said to him, everybody there is a

Christian at SBL. And Mike is a member of SBL. And how many other people who think like Mike are members of SBL?

Yeah, but see, he's using two different standards. He's saying Jews and apostles would not have recognized them as Christians.

But today, Christianity is this massively, as long as you call yourself a

Christian, it doesn't matter what you believe. As long as you use the word Jesus, you're a Christian. Do you really think that if someone like Croson, who says...

Now, he said he'd like to do that. That was Bart Ehrman saying, I'd like to do that. Well, boy, would

I... Oh, yeah, let's do it. He doesn't think God exists. Or like my friend Steve Patterson, who isn't certain whether God exists.

And if he does, he's nothing like the Judeo -Christian God. He's not even certain of an afterlife.

Croson doesn't believe in an afterlife. They all deny... Look, Mike, you would agree that these people are unusual in the society of biblical literature.

The vast majority of people in the society of biblical literature are Christians by your definition.

Are evangelicals? Oh, I mean... You mean only... Let me clarify that. You don't have to be an evangelical to be a Christian. I love saying that.

Okay. So... We're going to take a quick break here, guys, and we'll give you a chance to finish this up.

But, I mean, I think this has brought us into the area of, you know, whether you're, obviously, your presuppositions, and we might call them...

All right. So there you go. We actually will be able to hit the music on time, because there's still one last point that we'll be able to sneak into Tuesday's Dividing Line and then start taking your phone calls again, because it does...

It's where you get into the, yeah, I think the historical evidence demonstrates Jesus rose from the dead, but we can leave it as an open question as to who raised him from the dead.

And I just don't think that that's... And I have to agree with Bart Ehrman.

That's just not a possibility from a Christian perspective in any way, shape, or form.

But we'll pick up with that come Tuesday, Lord willing. You join us at that time, and we'll get back to taking your phone calls here on the

Dividing Line. Who knows? Maybe I'll have been up for a long time on Tuesday by the time we get to the program.

Maybe I'll have some interesting things to share with you at that point. I don't know. I hope so. Try to let you know on the blog what's going to happen as far as that goes, but, hey, we will find out.

Well, thanks for listening to the program today. We'll see you next week. God bless. I believe we're standing at the crossroads.

Let this moment of sin flow away. We must contend for the faith above us fought for.

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